Intellectual Diarrhoea

Having given a lengthy explanation strengthening your stance about the latest political or religious or social event on WhatsApp or Facebook, are you considering yourself a Contributor to Global Welfare ?

Be sure, you may be contributing to spread of a disease that is spreading like plague, wasting human capital and productivity. This disease hasn’t been named yet. For now, let us call it ID, i.e., Intellectual Diarhhoea.

Yuck ! Why be so cruel ! you may ask ! Read ahead.

After the Industrial, Information ages, experts have called the current era as the Social age. The former two focused on livelihood and standard of living. The current age relies more on social rewards, feedback and responses than anything else. Craving for Likes and Shares we have been driven to skip the fundamental tenet called rationale. We are moving awkwardly to populism.

Self-prophesied dieticians, doctors, political analysts, philosophers are plundering the internet. Watch the growing number of youtube channels, innumerable hours that each one in our families spend on WhatsApp, Youtube and Facebook. Leave aside the screen time, my discussion here is about the garbage that is getting into our heads. .

Each one of us seem to have an opinion about every thing and every one. There seem to be no pass to the continuously bombarding questions that the social media throw upon us. Obviously, all cant be answered by all. But we think we know All. Many of the issues that we are confronting today are so very irrelevant to our way of life. Yet we tend to own them and hold close to our heart. We find it to get intellectual highs, when we do participate in such a debate or dialogue. Majority of the times, we move away from the subject of discussion and attribute personal glory to such exchanges. We do get ruthlessly personal when addressing some issues. Thereby, getting emotionally attached and finally ending up throwing tantrums.

Here comes the intellectual diarrhoea part. With growing irrelevance the discussions become so messy that decency flies out of the window. Narratives become boringly meaningless and lengthy, language – irreverent. Total disregard for the people the message is addressed to. In ones own effort to establish intellectual prowess to the group, resorting to lowly abuses hidden behind ornamental language. Thus, it stinks, deprives energy and spreads bad blood. It is diarrhoea of the intellectual kind.

On another tangent, the internet is flooded with millions of prophets who prescribe their own religions, medicines, diets and their own decisive truths. There is no validation or calibration to facts. The observer is made to believe all of that through tailored visuals and text.

We have started suspecting everything. Right from the children living next-door, our maid/ help, vegetables, meat, animals, almost everything. Not sparing even the air we breathe. Awareness about the ill-effects is one thing. Too much of concern about everything, is nothing but being paranoid.

Life strives on Love and Optimism. We tend to forget this basic facet of Life. Now watch the people around us. We validate and judge them which renders almost everyone unworthy of our Trust. On the contrary, we have become unworthy of their Trust.

It is this Trust, Love and Optimism, that we should be propagating more. If not for these values, the world we leave to our next generation shall be more messy to which we are directly responsible. So its time we clean up the mess we have created. Lets build on the faith that Love, Trust and Optimism shall lead us through all odds of Life.

Enough with this Intellectual Diarrhoea.